This invention relates generally to digital content, and more particularly to tagging social networking system users and other objects in digital content published outside of a social networking system domain.
Social networking systems typically allow users to upload photos, videos, and other types of digital content onto the social networking system, which then displays the content to other users of the social networking system. Social networking systems also enable users to tag themselves and other users in the uploaded digital content to indicate the identity of the people who appear in that content. For example, a user may upload a photo in which the user's friend appears and then tag the photo to indicate that the user's friend appears in the photo. Thereafter, other users of the social networking system can view the tagged photo and see that the friend appears in the photo. The social networking system can also route content items based on who is tagged in the content. In the previous example, the social networking system may forward the tagged photo to the friends of the user who were tagged in the photo, regardless of who uploaded the photo.
Although this tagging feature can be very powerful, it does not extend to content that appears outside of the social networking system. For example, many web pages accessible over the Internet may contain content in which users of the social networking system appear, but there are no tools that enable tagging users in that content in a way that is useable by the social networking system. A user can generally view web content associated with a particular person by searching for the content, e.g., using a search engine. But to link that content to the user's profile in the social networking system, the viewing user would have to save the content, manually upload the content to the social networking system, and then provide the tagging information within the social networking system. This method of tagging one's friends in can be cumbersome and time consuming.